Farewell to 15.1hh ‘cheeky coloured cob’ who went from Pony Club to Badminton

Patris Filius, the 15.1hh ‘cheeky coloured cob’ who won a young rider team gold medal and completed Badminton Horse Trials with Olivia Wilmot (née Haddow), was put down last week at the age of 31.

“He was always cheeky from day one and up until last year when was 30, he couldn’t go in a field with other horses – he had proper little man syndrome where he didn’t like anybody in his space,” said Olivia. “But I guess that’s probably what ended up making him so good, that fact he was feisty and full of his own importance.”

The Haddow family bought Filius as a six-year-old. His owner then, Andrea Parsons, had bought him from a market – “as a gypsy cob” – as a two-year-old for her husband and Vicky Tuffs then started his eventing career, competing him up to novice.

“We bought him for my sister Ailie to do Pony Club and JRNs [junior regional novice classes] on,” said Olivia. “Initially my dad didn’t even want to go and see him because he was a coloured cob and he said, ‘You don’t see coloured cobs out competing’ – and it was true, 25 years ago there weren’t so many. It was probably the second time the advert appeared in Eventing magazine that we decided to go and try him.

“I didn’t like him but my sister fell in love and was adamant we were getting him and the rest is history.”

Ailie competed Patris Filius for a couple of years up to intermediate level and then he moved to Olivia. In 2004 the pair were 13th individually at the young rider Europeans in Barroca d’Alva, Portugal, and in 2005 they were team gold medallists in Segersjö, Sweden.

“He’d run away with me all the time in trot – under saddle or in hand,” said Olivia. “At Burgie, trotting up in front of the house, he ran off across the lawn with me. At the young rider Euros in Portugal, we were taking the horses for a hack and I got run away with in trot. [Team trainer] Gill Watson was quite surprised Filius could take off at such speed in trot, but he could win any trotting race.

“I was talking to my friend David Edney, who groomed for Filius at all his three-days with me, and we were having a laugh about all the nice Facebook comments after he died because much as we all loved him, everybody at events bore war wounds because he’d bite and kick, it was just part of him when he was excited at a competition.”

Patris Filius: career highlights

Olivia said the pair had “a lot of happy times and went on a lot of fun journeys” together. She picked out three occasions as highlights of the pair’s career.

One was their first of three runs in the under-25 CCI3* (now CCI4*-L) at Bramham Horse Trials in 2006, when they finished fifth.

“The course caused a lot of trouble that year, I was one of last to go in the under-25s and it was our first time at the level,” said Olivia. “I think a lot of people had watched our journey from Pony Club to young riders and thought maybe Bramham was a step too far and they should say something.

“So people were saying, ‘Don’t feel you have to run cross-country, it’s ok if you withdraw.’ I was like, ‘What are you worried about? I’m on Filius, he’ll go and jump round’ and he did, effortlessly. Of course we got time-faults, but he’d got this on the jumping side.

The pair’s dressage test on Olivia’s Burghley Horse Trials debut in 2007, when the pair shared seventh place with William Fox-Pitt and his 2005 Burghley winner Ballincoola on a score of 44.8 (29.9 in today’s scoring system), was another special moment.

“He went in and thought, ‘This is my moment to show off’ and rose to the occasion,” said Olivia. “It was Friday afternoon, the stadium was packed, there were so many emotional people who I didn’t even know. He got so many fan letters. Unfortunately I then fell off at the Trout Hatchery which wasn’t my finest moment, so we had ups and downs at Burghley.”

Finally, Olivia mentioned completing her first Badminton on Patris Filius the following year.

“It was a proper dream come true to do that on a horse who I’d been second at the Pony Club championships on,” she said. “My sister won at the Pony Club championships the year before, so she likes to wind me up to this day about the fact she won and I was second, but the fact he went from Pony Club championships to completing my first Badminton is really something.”

Olivia also blogged for H&H in the build-up to Badminton and daily during the competition.

Patris Filius stepped down from top-level eventing after the 2009 season and Ailie continued to compete him in grassroots affiliated eventing on and off until 2018. She was still riding him at home until two years ago, after which he was retired at Olivia’s home, “just being a cheeky cob as he always was”.

The family decided it was time to let him go last week.

“There was nothing major wrong, but he was 31 and just didn’t quite have the same sparkle about him. He was still carrying weight, but he had lost quite a lot of teeth and others were decaying so we didn’t want him to get uncomfortable eating,” said Olivia.

“We thought, ‘He doesn’t owe us anything’ and none of us could face anything going wrong with him or happening to him. He’d had a nice sunny day in the field and that’s all you can do for your horses – you can’t let them go downhill and turn into something they’re not.”

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